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Topic: laying workers? (Read 5692 times)

i'm new so bare with me. at a bee meeting we discussed not being able to locate the queen and not much happening inside. they talked about the workers who are laying can not fly, so one said he took the hive about 100 feet away and dumped it. he said they would die in the grass. is this true ?

I have seen it work, and have seen it not work. It is worth a try, but if it doesn't work, the best thing to do is combine the laying worker hive with a stronger queen-right hive using the newspaper method. The queen-right hive will kill the laying worker. I have yet to have this method fail. You can always create a split from the combined hive with a new queen.

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"Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work." - Thomas Edison

Laying workers are generally young nurse bees who, when the queen's pheremone is no longer circulating around the hive, begin laying sterile eggs. You can usually tell if you have laying workers because they are not fussy about where they lay the eggs and generally deposit 2,3, or even 4 eggs in a single cell. Since these young bees have never taken orientation flights they don't know their way around in the big wide world outside the hive (like the field bees do) and if taken 100 feet or so away, cannot find their way back to the hive and, yes, do die in the grass. But that's a good thing because a hive with laying workers in it have only drone hatch out and eventually, without workers, are doomed!

Dump the hive (every last bee), re-queen, the field bees will find their way back to the old hive location, new bees will hatch from the brood and with the new queen pheremone circulating around the hive, all will be well (in theory)! :D

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they lay the eggs and generally deposit 2,3, or even 4 eggs in a single cell.

This is not a tell tale sign of a laying worker. It is quite common for a young queen or an overwintered queen who is just starting to lay again to lay more than one egg per cell. Given a week or so, they tend to settle down. A broad scattered pattern is a better indication, especially when they are capped over as drones. It is also a better chance that the eggs are from a laying worker if the eggs are stuck on the side of the cell and not placed nicely in the bottom of the cell.

I don't know if it is true or not, but John claims a queen is the only bee that can back into a cell, and that a laying worker lays eggs outside of a cell and it is then placed down into the cell.

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"Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work." - Thomas Edison

Robo what is this newspaper method you are speaking of. I have two feral collins S1and S2. I killed the queen by misstake in S2. They have made a couple of ettemps at making a new queen but thuse far have had no luck at it. I would like to put the bees that are still alive in S2 to some good use. If there is a way to get them excepted by S1 hive. I would like to try it, unless it poses to big a risk to S1 hive. They are stronge and doing very good. the queen is laying good patterns of brood. I don't want to screw them up any.

Firetool, if your queenless colony is strong enough, give them a fram of eggs and young brood from the strong colony--maybe they can raise a queen from those eggs.

Otherwise, the newspaper method means opening the strong hive, putting a couple of sheets of newspaper on top, slitting it in a few places, and putting the queenless hive over it. The gives them time to get acquainted without fighting.

>so one said he took the hive about 100 feet away and dumped it. he said they would die in the grass. is this true ?

This is a commonly held belief. I don't believe it. But shaking them out sometimes works to get them to accept a queen. If you have several hives, I recommend just shaking them all out in front of the other hives and put the frames (minus the bees) in the other hives and split one of your strong ones if you really want another hive.

I've wasted a lot of queens and effort and time trying to get a laying worker hive to accept a queen. The best luck I've had is a newspaper combine with a nuc. But all in all, I don't think it's worth the effort.

Anonymous

Last year I and others in our club for some reason had a number of hives that started having a lot of drone cells. After searching by at least two members no queen was found in any of them, decided it must be a laying worker in each case.Ordered new queens, took the hives from their stands about 100 Yards out into the grass then shook the bees off every frame after spraying them with vanilla. Placed a different hive in the spot where the removed one sat, placed the now empty hive we dumped in the place of the second hive. then we placed two frames of bees and brood from the second hive in it along with the caged queen. The next day we had once again two strong hives, and after three days in each case the queens had bee released ending our drone cell problems.Nice thing about being a club member is you can always find another set of eyes when looking in a bee hive. :D Al

I have had this problem recently and tried the method of taking hive 100 feet away and shaking all on the ground. Well I had an influx of bees trying to get back in once I put the hive back... the workers that have already been out flying, and there was a big pile of bees left on the ground. I gave fresh eggs and a frame of fresh bees with Queen cell, 2 days later I saw signs of laying worker again! So, I repeated and we will see.

shaking the hive out works if you have other hives and if you put the original hive away. if you just put the same box back, they will return to it. if they do not have their home, they will move into other hives.

shaking them out is the easiest way to deal with laying workers in my opinion, but only if you have other hives.

i'm not sure i'd do a combine with a queen-right hive and a laying worker hive. seems that would be to much risk to the queen.

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Serge Labesque, a beekeeping Guru, in California says to place a frame with emerging brood into the hive the first week. Next week, place a frame of eggs into the hive. The bees that were born the week before will make the queen cell from the eggs. He says the other bees in the hive are too old to make the queen cell.

I have never tried this. I shook my hive out on the ground in front of the other hives and they were accepted into the other hive.

No I wasn't thinking about combining because you would lose a hive mearly wonding if by putting a queen right hive above a laying worker hive if the laying worker would be suppressed enough after a week or two to allow a new queen to be introduced.

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Sting me once shame on you! Sting me twice I guess I should have learned faster!